


The Fire and The Flood

by katebishoop



Series: tumblr prompts [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Confrontations, F/M, Late Night Conversations, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 08:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5960955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katebishoop/pseuds/katebishoop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke came home, for good this time, apparently. Isn't that what he wanted? She may have looked like her old self again, but he knew that she wasn’t that person that he used to know.</p><p>A late night conversation. An air of grievances.<br/>-<br/>Spoilers for Season 3.<br/>Written before 3x04</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fire and The Flood

**Author's Note:**

> **in a convo with daydreamingdesiheart:** I'm sitting here day dreaming about a scene later when she comes back to arkadia and after they talk, she says thank you  
>  **AND a day later, an anonymous asked:** I just read your most recent bellarke fic! And I was hoping you could maybe write something where this whole separate plotlines crap is over, and Bellamy and Clarke get to have a conversation, and Bellamy gets to air all his grievances with Clarke, and they have a fight BUT IT ALL ENDS HAPPILY?

It wasn’t unusual for Bellamy to wander the halls at night. Ever since the Mountain, the first time, he had had trouble sleeping. Ever since the Mountain, the second time, sleeping had been damn near impossible.

What was unusual was for him to run into Clarke though, since she had never come home. Since she had left before they could build anything and who had refused to come home still.

But she had arrived that morning from Polis, and even though Raven told him that she said it was for good this time, he didn’t want to see her.

She was in atrium - their mess hall, their bar, their  _ former  _ supply run sorting area. He didn’t want to see her - but it was so jarring, to see that blonde hair among all the grey that it surprised him, lifted something in his chest he hadn’t wanted to feel - and trying to get back, he had made his presence known with a thud.

She spun around at the sound, and his breath caught in his throat when he saw her face. Her face was bare of any warpaint; she had trimmed her hair, all traces of red dye gone. Her eyes lit up when she saw him, and she had the smallest of smiles on her face.

She looked like her old self again.

But he had a hard time believing that.

“Bellamy.” She breathes out his name and heads towards him.

Isn’t this what he had wanted? For her to come home?

She may have looked like her old self again, but he knew that she wasn’t that person that he used to know.

She must have sensed the tension in his body because she stopped short of him, farther away than she would have before. The smile fell from her face, but she didn’t look sad, just neutral. Guarded.

“I tried to find you earlier,” Clarke says, “but Kane and my Mother kept dragging me around, and all of this-” she gestures to the room around them “-was a lot to take in-”

“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Bellamy deadpans, “since you weren’t here to build it with us.”

His harshness didn’t seem to surprise her; she just looked sad, defeated.

She takes a step towards him.“Bellamy-”

_ “Don’t,”  _ Bellamy grits out between teeth, “you don’t get-”

“I had to leave. I thought you understood-”

“I understood the _ first _ time!” Bellamy shouts. His exterior was cracking, the dam breaking; he could never hold back, when it came to her. “I understood because I had wanted to do the same thing! But you had convinced me to stay!”

_ You want forgiveness, fine, I'll give it to you. You're forgiven, ok, but you can't run, Bellamy. You have to come back with me. You have to face it. _

“But I couldn’t convince you,” Bellamy was dangerous, simmering, boiling over. “Both times I asked you and  _ both _ times you left!”

“I had to!” Clarke may have been pleading, but she was just as angry as he was, “I had to do what I thought was right, for our people-”

“ _ Our  _ people.” Bellamy spats, “you picked them over us.”

Clarke throw her hands up into the air. “What happened to  _ it had to be done _ ?”

“What happened to  _ we make the rules _ ? What happened to _ together _ ?” Bellamy snarls, “And don’t give me Dante’s _ I bear it _ bullshit. Because that’s not how it works,  _ Clarke _ -” Her name fires out of his mouth like a bullet from a gun. “-it  _ never  _ worked like that.”

“I  _ had _ to stay.” Clarke has closed her eyes; she’s hiding again. “I had a plan. I needed to make sure-”

_ “I needed you!”  _ And the volcano inside him erupts; the confession, like a sonic boom coming straight from his broken heart, blows her eyes wide open. “I needed you but you left me -  _ again _ !” Bellamy’s fist flies out and slams down on  the closest thing to him - the piano, and it makes a noise like that sounds like a wail. “Octavia’s gone, have you noticed that? She couldn’t stand to be here anymore so she  _ left _ . And Gina-” Bellamy’s breath catches at the name, on the way it tastes on his lips. “She died in the Mountain. I cared about her, I really did, I could have loved her-”

He could have, eventually. That’s the part that gets to him, that holds him back, because mourning Gina feels wrong. It feels wrong to grieve so much when he had never given him all of his heart to begin with, not as much as she had to him; it feels wrong to feel for her more strongly after she’s dead and gone. It feels wrong to be relieved to see Clarke is alive, when Gina is dead, even though those are unrelated events. It feels wrong to be relieved to see Clarke in a lot of ways, a betrayal to Gina, to himself, to his anger.

“She’s dead,” His voice cracks like the cocking of a gun. Bellamy tries to put the pieces back, to rein himself in. He will not be a wildfire, like her, burning everything in her wake; he will be a flamethrower, his chaos will be more controlled. He only has one target. “I find out she’s dead, and there you were, staying with those that killed her and all the others.”

He straightens himself up and faces her. If looks could kill, they’d both be dead. He, glaring daggers straight into her heart; she, with glassy eyes, flooding his. He doesn’t want to feel bad for her, he threw it in her face, her ignorance on the matter, he used it as a weapon, but. That pang wouldn’t go away - that pang he felt towards her, the desire to reach out and to forgive it would never go away, no matter how much he tried.

But he was still trying.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and the phrase sounds nothing like it did when she said it last, when she refused to come home yet again. It didn’t sound like a leader making a decision, a firm, final, unsympathetic answer. It sounded like Clarke again, from a months and months ago, under the shadows of the trees, in a space that only they knew. 

“I didn’t want to stay, you have to know that.” Clarke is pleading again, but all of her anger is gone, her fire put out by her tears. “I had a plan and if we only had more time I would have told you but-” Clarke sucks in a breath, she had picked up the pace in her speech. She tries to steady herself. “I had to see it through. I had to do what I thought what I thought was right, not what what I wanted - and please, believe me I wanted nothing more than to go home. But I had to protect you all just a little while longer.”

She is crying in earnest now the tears silently streaming down her face but screaming at him. Her flood has put out her fire, and his.

He could give that to her, forgiveness, always. His heart was always one step ahead of him. But he was catching up.

“What do you mean?” His tone is not gentle, but the harshness, the sharpness of the knife, is gone, at least. 

It takes Clarke a few moments to calm herself enough to speak - and Bellamy has to hold himself back from reaching out to her  _ (no, not yet) _ \- she has to wipe at her eyes, there’s another hitch her breath, and he can make out the small movement of her lips mouthing  _ one, two, three, four… _

He thought it would be impossible, for her break his heart again, but there she was.

“I couldn’t let anyone else die because of me,” Clarke manages, her voice cracking towards the end. “No one is safe around  _ Wanheda,  _ and I still needed to be that.”

“Clarke,” He says, and the name is like hollow prayer a hope, “what is it?”

She still has one last wall up, and she looks scared. He can tell. 

(He can read her again, and it feels like he’s letting out a breath he’d been holding for too long).

The way she looks right now, it reminds him of how she looked when they found Wells’ body. Of when Charlotte jumped off the cliff. Of when she didn’t think she could save Finn,  of when she saw the Exodus ship crash and believed her mother to be dead, of when she finally couldn’t save Finn.

It reminds him, of when she was bargaining for his life.

_ Oh, please. Please don't. I'll do anything. I... I'll stop fighting. Just please don't kill him. _

He pleads, he prays, he begs, again: “ _ Clarke.. _ .”

She has given up on brushing away the tears. There was no stopping them. “I needed you, too,” she says, a ragged whisper, “but I needed you to be as far away from me as possible. I couldn’t let you die - I wouldn’t - I wouldn’t let them kill you. You weren’t safe there. I - I couldn’t lose you - I can’t-”

He cannot stop himself this time. He cannot stop the compulsion, the desire, the natural force that pulls him towards her, that has him wrap his arms around her and hold her tight and stroke her hair. 

She is surprised at first, but then she’s clutching at him with equal conviction, her fingers curling into his shirt, and then he’s holding her up, supporting her weight as that last wall of her comes tumbling down.

“They- they  _ knew _ , Bellamy.” His name comes out as a gut-wrenching sob. “Lexa had known, and Roan had figured it out when you found me. He - the Ice Nation-” Clarke burrows her face into his chest. “I wanted to come back sooner. I wanted to figure everything out with you -  _ together _ . But I couldn’t let them hurt you. They know that you’re my weakness. That’d I’d do anything for - They’d have hurt you to get to me - they would have  _ killed  _ you and- and-”

“I know I don’t deserve it,” Clarke is shaking, shivering. “forgiveness isn’t about what people deserve. I don’t deserve you but _ please, Bellamy, _ I can’t lose you, I can’t lose you too-”

They have disagreed on many things, and this, their time apart, has been the biggest one. But the agree on more, they agree, on the deepest of convictions:  _ I can’t lose you _ .

No matter how much their bodies separated themselves from each other, their hearts would never be apart. They were each other’s shadows, they were in each other’s blood. They were everywhere together even when miles apart.

His desire to be bitter and vindictive has dissipated completely. It had been overridden by that more basic, natural desire of his: _ Clarke _ .

He was crying too now, because -  _ God _ \-  it felt good. To cry, to have Clarke in her arms, to have her home.

“You’re forgiven.” He says the words, and a weight lifts off from his shoulders. Resentment is tiring, it is chains holding one down, especially when it is a burden one doesn’t want to bear. Forgiving is freeing, it is easy once he lets himself. “I forgive you, Clarke. I’m sorry, I forgive you. I’ll give that to you.  _ Always. _ You’re forgiven.”

They were far from healed; they were still broken, puzzles and mosaics of shattered and missing pieces. But they were  _ together _ , and they were better for it.

“I promise,” Clarke says into his tear soaked shirt. “I promise I’m not going to leave again. I don’t want to, I can’t, I learned that. I’m… I’m not losing you again.”

Bellamy soothes her, sweet nothings and all, and strokes her hair, sways them to some melody he vaguely remembers hearing during their time apart. He will integrate his memories with her, he will share that with her, until there is no more gap in their story, until there is not a part of his life that she does not touch.

Because she’s not getting away from him. Never again.

Her sobs turn into croaks; her croaks turn into sniffles. Then there is just silence - heavy breathing, hearts pounding, souls touching. 

He feels her whisper  _ thank you _ against his chest. He feels her whisper something else, three simple words, straight to his heart.

He closes his eyes, and he is back inside the gates of Camp Jaha, and she slamming into his chest and wrapping her arms around him, breathing him in. He is back in Mount Weather, hearing her voice over the radio, worried and relieved and proud. He is back at outside the gates of Camp Jaha, and she hugs him and kisses his cheek. But this time, she comes inside. She comes home.

He whispers those words to her, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing this fic listening to _Rootless Tree_ by Damien Rice, which is where all the angst comes from. And then halfway through I switched to _Fire and The Flood_ by Vance Joy, which completely changed the direction of this fic. I had been expecting a lot more shouting, honestly.  
>  (Also, did you spot the Percy Jackson reference?)  
> come hang out over on [tumblr](http://bellakeyblake.tumblr.com)!


End file.
